In early June, Richard Cameron-Wolfe will have a three-city Ukraine concert and lecture tour. Beginning in Kharkov, during the "Kharkov Contemporary - 2016" festival, a "composer's profile" concert will take place in the Organ Hall of the Kharkov Philharmonic on June 2, featuring the premiere of Richard Cameron-Wolfe's 30-minute cantata "Breathless" - setting ancient mystical texts by Fahruddin Iraqi, Sisupacala, Lao Tsu, Mechtild of Magdeburg, Quasmuna, Teresa of Avila, and Kabir (performed by mezzo soprano Anna Bychkova, cellist Viktor Rekalo, and the Kharkov Guitar Quartet).
The concert will include the European premiere of Cameron-Wolfe's 2015 micro-opera "A Sound-Shroud for Bill Knott" (in Ukrainian; featuring Kharkov Opera Theatre's principal stage director Armen Kaloyan as the Poet and Butoh dancer Irina Avdeyeva as the Death Angel). Also on the program is another premiere: Sergey Gorkusha's flute &
guitar transcription of Cameron-Wolfe's "Kyrie(Mantra)" (performed by Kseniya Konoval and Mr. Gorkusha). In the days preceding the concert, he will offer lecture-previews on the concert repertoire at Kharkov National Kotlyarevsky University of the Arts and in the "Come In" Gallery.
The next lecture and concert, on June 3 and 4 in the city of Zhitomir, will include the "Breathless" cantata, "Kyrie(Mantra)III" (Sergey Vilka and Mr. Gorkusha), and Cameron-Wolfe's de facto Op.1, the "Variations and Liebestod" for solo clarinet (performed by Nikolai Polyanovsky). The lecture-preview - concerning the selection and setting of texts for the cantata - will be held at Ivan Franko University, while the concert will take place at the Soviet Sergei Korolyev Museum of Cosmonautics.
The third concert will take place in the Kiev Hall of the Union of Composers on June 6. In addition to the "Breathless" cantata and "Kyrie(Mantra)III", it will include Cameron-Wolfe's solo-guitarist micro-opera "Heretic" (performed by Sergey Gorkusha), and two works - "Time Refracted" and "Lilith" - performed by members of the cutting-edge Kiev new music ensemble "Sed contra": cellist Zoltan Almashi, pianist Vitaliy Kyianitsia, and violinist Mariana Skrypa.
